ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith SLAMS BYU; Here's Why He's Wrong

ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith took a major cheap shot at BYU and AJ Dybantsa, and it deserves a real response. In this video, I break down exactly what Stephen A. said about BYU, why the take was misguided, and how it ignored key context around Kevin Young, Richie Saunders, Dawson Baker, and the injuries that wrecked BYU’s depth all season.

I also explain why the criticism of AJ Dybantsa going to BYU falls apart when you look at the results. Dybantsa carried a huge load, elevated his draft stock, and now looks more like a possible No. 1 NBA Draft pick than he did at the start of the year. Even Stephen A. Smith’s own comments undercut his argument.

This video covers BYU basketball, Stephen A. Smith, AJ Dybantsa, Kevin Young, the NCAA Tournament loss to Texas, BYU’s injuries, and why lazy national narratives still miss the reality of what’s happening in Provo.

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Transcript

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ESPN's biggest personality just took a massive shot at BYU. It's misguided, of course, and it comes from somebody in Stephen A. Smith, who we know does not watch college basketball. In this video, I'm going to explain to you exactly what Stephen A. Smith said about BYU, tell you why it is so misguided. It plays on some typical stereotypes as well, and show you how Stephen A actually proves himself wrong on his own show. Yeah. Welcome into the Open for Business Big 12 podcast. I am your host, John Kurtz. This is where the Big 12 just means more. So BYU season ended early in the NCAA tournament. First round loss, very frustrating, covered here on this channel. If you're a BYU fan, I'm sure it was incredibly frustrating to watch because A.J. DeBonsa was incredible. He had 35 and 10. It was a pretty typical performance for him post-Ritchie Saunders, especially when he had to start carrying so much of the load for this team, and he just did not get enough help, especially on the defensive end. BYU really struggled to stop Texas defensively. Now, Texas has gone on to make it to the Sweet 16. So maybe that lessens the sting a bit. Maybe we view it in a slightly different light, but it was not a good performance. Nobody is here to try and convince you of that. And there is certainly a debate to be had about how much of the blame for this year and some of the underachieving based on expectations lay on the shoulders of Kevin Young, BYU head coach, right? Now, to me, this is a complicated debate because of all the injuries that BYU had to deal with this year, something that I'm not sure Stephen A. Smith is acutely aware of. Richie Saunders obviously went down for the season about two-thirds of the way through. That's a guy who was a potential All-American, first team All Big 12 player. Massive deal to lose him. But even beyond that, Dawson Baker, who probably would have been a sixth man. There were two other injuries of guys coming in who likely would have been rotation players. I've done an entire video on all this, right? Like it's it's complicated how much blame Kevin Young should get when you dealt with that type of injury luck. No matter what, I can understand the type of thinking that AJ DeBonsa deserved a better March Madness experience than what he got because he just did not have enough help to play the way or as long anyway as he should have been able to in the NCAA tournament. Everybody would have liked to have seen that, right? I I suppose, unless you're a Utah fan, maybe, everybody wanted to see more AJ DeBonsa in the tournament. He is a phenomenal talent. He had some of uh just some incredible moments in that Texas game, that reverse jam, for instance, comes to mind. Everybody wanted more of that. You want to see the best players play more. And his play itself warranted more. But here's where Stephen A. Smith comes in. Okay, some people, like ESPN Stephen A. Smith, have no room for a nuanced conversation here or to get into the minutiae or the details of what's actually going on. Instead, we're gonna play off of stereotypes and just uneducated takes. So, what exactly did Stephen A say? Please do subscribe to the channel, pushing toward 35k subs. Just one click really helps me out. Like the video as well. Thank you, everybody. Okay, so I can't play you the specific audio here without getting a copyright strike or having issues with ESPN there, but I can show you and tell you exactly what the quote was. So on first take, Stephen A. Smith is doing a segment about AJ DeBonzo, whether or not he's gonna be the number one pick in the draft. And he says, quote, I can say it now. I didn't want to say it before. I was never excited about him going to BYU. Not even a little bit. I was never excited about that. You can talk about a cat that had to carry the load, it was definitely him. And then not only that, their bench in terms of bench minutes, bench productivity, they ranked like 308th in the nation at BYU. So, but DeBonsa has been dealing with this all year. I don't know why the hell he went to BYU personally. It should have been somewhere else. That's just me. Okay, shout out to Ben Critdle, my guy, for uh putting that together on Twitter for us. But man, I mean, okay, first of all, the bench uh this is where we need nuanced discussion. Like, fair point. The bench wasn't given BYU a lot, but when you've lost Richie Saunders and Dawson Baker and two other rotation players, yeah, your bench gets pretty small. Like, if any other roster in the country had to deal with that, their bench would not be able to provide a lot. So let's let's offer that context here. Had he gone to Arizona, had he gone to Duke, right? If they took the hit that BYU did to the roster, the the bench would look a bit different. That's one of the really frustrating points here, okay? And of course, we're we're not getting that context provided within the context of this segment. But also, it's Stephen A is acting like BYU is some horrible program. Like this was choosing to go to uh a mid-major or something like that, ignoring the fact like, can we get the context that BYU went to the Suite 16 last year? BYU's head coach, Kevin Young, was likely to get an NBA head coaching job had he stayed and not take it over at BYU. Like, that's not some crazy decision or a bad decision to go to that school. When you're going to play for a guy who was really well respected in the NBA who just went to the Suite 16, and there are plenty of resources there, right? Like, certainly, as I've seen all the jokes flowing in on Twitter since BYU lost and all the takes, there was no shortage of financial resources and compensation given to AJ DeBonsa uh to go play there either. I think a lot of this comes down to like some of the stereotype that is typically there for BYU, that is just this boring place. But I would even push back on Stephen A with that and say, like, hey, if you're the guy here that really cares, we know Stephen A's not here for college basketball. He's here for what's this dude gonna look like in the NBA? He wants his NBA future to be as good and lucrative as possible. What could be better than going to play with basically an NBA head coach in a place where you have no distractions? Like there is no partying distraction there for AJ DeBonsa. It is, I'm gonna focus on hoops. And like he's talked about that. That's what you want. Like he's been able to just focus in on what is the most important thing there if you're thinking about his NBA potential in the future, and that is basketball. He's done it at BYU. Stephen A should be cheerleading that if that's what he really cares about. But the most ridiculous part of all of this is that what has happened to AJ DeBonsa's draft stock since going to BYU in this situation. Yeah, he did have to shoulder the load, carry the load a lot. He got to show what he can do, and he got to show it in contrast to Darren Peterson, who is his chief competition for the number one pick in the draft, where Darren Peterson dealt with injury issues, not being in the lineup, and then himself faltering at the end of the year, being sluggish. AJ DeBonsa was playing damn near 40 minutes a night, scoring damn near 40 a night, and doing it all while showing that, like, hey, he can shoulder the load and just night in, night out be there and have the availability and play. He showed NBA teams exactly what Darren Peterson could not. And now it's gone from at the beginning of the season for AJ DeBonsa and BYU being like, oh, he's kind of the consensus number two pick, like in the conversation for number one, but probably will be number two, to now the tone on that has completely changed. You're seeing a lot of people out there quoting NBA scouts or GMs or whatever, saying that they would take AJ DeBonza number one. In fact, if you just go listen to the full clip, and I'll link it in the description of the video, the full first take clip. What does Stephen A. Smith say in the same clip? He says he would take him number one. Quote, I think he should be the number one pick. So, okay, Stephen A. AJ DeBonsa, consensus number two overall pick, goes to BYU and comes out now at the end looking more like the potential number one pick. He has improved his draft stock, and even you are saying that. What was the problem here? Like, what was the problem here? It certainly was not a lack of visibility. You could see plenty of BYU games on ESPN's family of networks. He got the huge showcase game at Allen Fieldhouse when it was him against Darren Peterson. Like, what more were you looking for out of this whole deal? Things worked out pretty well. He went to a place with an NBA coach, focused solely on hoops, upped his draft stock, balled out all season, showed his availability and how much load he can actually carry, in direct contrast to Darren Peterson, who could not handle the same thing. I I failed to see the problem here, and it's just it's just another hater, man. It's just another flyby hater who would have preferred. If if Stephen A would just come out and say, like, hey man, I like big brands, I like North Carolina, Duke, Kentucky, whatever, because I'm a casual college basketball fan, then I would have a lot more respect for this. Like, hey, I just I wanted him to go to a blue blood because that's what I care more about when I don't watch a whole lot of college basketball. That's fine. I understand that, but the way it was presented and slanted here, very, very frustrating to me. But let me know what you think in the comments. Was Stephen A. right? Let me know what you think. Like the video. And uh, hey, how much should Kevin Young be blamed for what happened this season to BYU? Click here to find out.